Occupy Protest Exercise

In today’s lesson we experimented with creating symbolic protests, that were based on the views of the occupy Wall Street movement protesters. As a stimuli we used the vertambin transcript that we had already completed as research on the occupy Wall Street movement.

In my group we used Sasha’s transcript because it was one of a very negative view of someone whom disagreed with the protesters. We used this because we believed it would be very effective and convey the stark contrast of protesters opinions to the audience. 

As Sasha read out his transcript (in an American accent) the rest of my group used the protest piece 'die in' which is much like a 'sit in' however differs in the aspect that instead of just sitting and occupying a space, the protesters feign death whilst occupying a space. During Sasha’s reading of his transcript one by one each member of my group stood up and said something that contradicted exactly what Sasha had just said (in an American accent). For example when Sasha said that the protesters smelled bad, Asa stood up and interrupted Sasha's speech by saying "We don't smell, it you who smells... Of dirty blood money!" After each individual had said their piece to Sasha we then began walking in a circle around him. Once all 5 other members of my group had come out of their 'die in' position, interrupted Sasha, and had began circling him we all came to a sudden stop at which point we all turned facing inwards surrounding Sasha and then reached out to one another and held hands, to represent us 'kettling' him, and then Sasha shouted at us "I am the one percent!" Then to slightly mimic and in a way mock the human microphone form of protest - we all chanted back "We are the ninety nine percent." After this Sasha slowly fell to the floor in a state of death, to reiterate the symbolism of death we had created at the beginning of our piece. The rest of my group, still in out circle surrounding Sasha, then let go of each other’s hands to form the "block" symbol by crossing both of our arms over our chests. After holding the "block" position for a moment to build tension we then all raised our right arms above our heads, and then slowly one by one walked away to indicate the ending of our piece.

I believe that this exercise was very useful because not only did it give us the opportunity to explore and demonstrate some of the various different forms of protests, it also enabled us to devise our own protest from scratch. We had complete artistic power and control over what we chose to do with our given stimuli, and in my opinion this allowed me as an individual to explore and experiment with lots of various different ideas, and to take on an authoritative decisive role in my group. I also then had the opportunity to refine my various ideas and choose the specific ones that I believed would make them most impact on the audience. The whole idea of choosing which different forms of protest you are going to use is so that you can individually come to the realization (As I myself did) that you should not choose a form just because it is aesthetically pleasing or easy to perform, you should however choose forms of protest that you decide and greatly beneficial to the point you are trying to make, and also have a deep impact on the audience. Overall, I found this exercise very fun and enjoyable, as well as learning a lot and exploring the various different ways of protesting.